Mark Edward Hall

Apocalypse Island is finally available on Kindle. The trade paperback version will be available in a few weeks. I’ll keep you updated. Thanks for all your support.

I have three legacy published books. The Lost Village, The Haunting of Sam Cabot, and The Holocaust Opera. Those who read my blog and keep up with my writing activities know by now that I’m sorry I ever went with a publisher. That’s not news but it is truer now and more relevant than ever. There is a post on this blog about how to make money publishing short stories an Amazon. If you haven’t read it you should. Here’s the link. http://www.markedwardhall.com/the-pros-of-publishing-short-stories-on-amazon There are other posts relevant to the independent author as well. And if you are an independent writer and you’re not familiar with Joe Konrath’s blog you need to be.

What I want to talk about today is a little novelette I wrote nearly fifteen years ago entitled The Hero of Elm Street. Now I’m primarily a horror writer. The Hero of Elm Street is not a horror story. It’s a light-hearted little ghost story about love, loss and the power of hope. Not generally my style, but because of my grandmother Luella, who meant a lot to me and was my greatest influence, the story has always been dear to my heart.

Back in the dark ages before kindle and nook and self-publishing (now known as independent publishing.) I sent that little story out to nearly every literary magazine in the country. I didn’t hear back from most of them. I did hear from Yankee. They said they liked it but felt it wasn’t right for them at the time. Yeah, we’ve all heard that before. So I buried the story and pretty much forgot about it.

Well, a year ago I decided to include The Hero of Elm Street in my collection, Servants of Darkness. I knew that it might get lost or overlooked in a collection of primarily dark tales. And I was right. Even though the collection has been selling reasonably well, I haven’t heard many people comment on that individual story.

So, on a whim I decided to put it out as a stand-alone story. I commissioned a cover and a little trailer and published it on Amazon. It sold some copies but nothing to write home about. So then I got the bright idea to include it as part of Amazon’s KDP Select Project and offer it for free for five days. KDP Select allows Prime members to borrow books, but the books also remain for sale. The only caveat: authors who sign up must agree to go exclusive with Amazon for a period of ninety days. I didn’t care. The story wasn’t doing much anyway. What did I have to lose?

250 copies were downloaded in the first three days of the promo and I thought, well, good try but that’s that. Then something amazing happened. Within the next twenty-four hours the story exploded as more than ten thousand copies were downloaded. I was stunned. I started receiving messages and mail and reviews, most saying how much they were moved by the story and thanking me for publishing it. I couldn’t believe it.

It was all very nice but I figured after the free promo ended that would be it. I was wrong. It continued to sell at an alarming rate. And some of my other titles started taking off. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t do anything different with this story. It’s a mystery to me, but a good mystery.

I see now, a week later that it’s slowing down some but still selling briskly. I couldn’t be happier. The point of this post is to encourage writers to never give up on a story. You don’t know what’s going to turn the reading audience on. And when you’re faced with an opportunity to put your work in front of a bigger audience, do it.

Don’t ever give up your dreams.

Darkness, my latest short story is now available for .99 on Smashwords.  Just click on the cover image and like magic you’re there.

Here’s a teaser:

DARKNESS

It’s all yours now. You own it. . .

The man did not know what that phrase meant any more than he had four days ago when he had come awake in the woods injured and afraid with it cycling through his head.

It’s all yours now. You own it. . .

He raised his head up and sniffed the air. For one brief moment of pure exaltation he thought he smelled smoke. He tried to scream into the forest but he was weak and the sound that it made choked in his throat and died there.

He sagged down onto the old railroad bed and sobbed. It had been too good to be true. The wonderfully sweet aroma of wood smoke was now gone, if it had ever been there in the first place.

The wind was moving in the trees and the sound it made was similar to that of a rushing stream. Another of nature’s tricks. The wilderness was rife with them. There was no reason to anything here. He was lost in a lost world where rationality had taken a permanent vacation. He would most likely die out here in this great chameleon forest where unspeakable shapes roamed, where the unimaginable could materialize at any moment and become tangible, where creatures of wickedness and dread would swiftly rip the flesh from ones bones, feast on it, and leave the rotted remains for vultures and worms. There was no discrimination out here, no distinction between man and beast, good and evil. It was the ultimate class system. The fit survived, the weak simply did not. It would be easier to put a gun to one’s own head and pull the trigger. Certainly more humane. If only he had a gun.

This is the video for my upcoming suspense thriller, Apocalypse island.

This is an update of a short erotic horror story I wrote nearly two years ago. I’ve rewritten it, given it a new cover and made it available as a single download.

Below is a description.

How many women did John Lennon bed in his lifetime? Does he still exist in a strange time warp where women are forced into his company by invisible men who drive skewed automobiles? Deb Stiles thinks so but she also believes that her soul is in jeopardy. She tells reporter Rick Sanchez about the strange East End Hotel known as Strawberry Fields and of the room with the number 9 on the door. Rick Sanchez doesn’t know it but he’s in for the ride of his life.
A story with a twist you won’t see coming.

Chapter 37

Pure instinct had been driving Annie onward for nearly three days now. Her decision to resume her artistic endeavors had come from someplace inside her that she did not understand. The muse was an essential element of her existence that lived almost as a separate force from her normal self. And even though she realized on that same elemental level that she could not stay here at her father’s home, that she would soon have to run, she could not curb the impulse to fill her remaining days here putting paint to canvas. Read more…

This is the cover art for the print edition of Servants of Darkness. Available through Amazon and many other outlets.

Invisible Toothpicks:

An Introduction to The Holocaust Opera

By, Vince A. Liaguno

Music and horror have always shared a symbiotic relationship. Think of a scary movie and, inevitably, some ominous snippet of soundtrack accompanies the memory. Try and imagine Halloween and not hear the synthesized notes of John Carpenter’s score, or The Exorcist without Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells. Or the menacing chords of composer John Williams’ two-note title theme to Jaws or the screeching violins of Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho score that ushered in Janet Leigh’s showery demise. Music is an essential element to the horror experience, helping to create mood, enhance atmosphere, and foreshadow the imminent terror lurking around every dark corner. It’s as fundamental a sound to horror as the scream itself. Read more…

My latest book in the Kindle chapbook series has just gone live. It is an 11,000 word novelette entitled The Breath of Life. Hope you check it out. The buyers link in the left-hand column will be active within twenty-four hours.

Here’s a synopsis:

1939, deep in the heart of the Egyptian desert archeologist Winston Smith has made the discovery of a lifetime. An old kingdom Mastaba tomb. But Smith suspects, from the markings on the door, that this tomb contains relics from the period of the new kingdom, the eighteenth dynasty. So begins an adventure that takes Smith deep beneath the Egyptian desert, while on the surface a storm is kicking up and a child is about to be born. As each adventure unfolds simultaneously and at breakneck speed the reader is taken along on a dizzying thrill ride of wonders and horrors, while elsewhere the architects of the future are making plans for an important arrival.

The Breath of Life is a fun, fast paced thriller steeped heavily in the tradition of the pulp novels of the early twentieth century.

Chapter 25

Doug stood at the foot of the bed watching Annie sleep wondering how his life had come to this moment. Ten years gone. From where he stood right now it felt like another life entirely, not his and Annie’s life. They’d been happy, hadn’t they? Or was it all some sort of illusion. Now, suddenly all his hopes and dreams were in jeopardy. Annie had come under the spell of some terrible darkness, factions beyond his worst nightmares wanted his firstborn for reasons yet unclear, De Roché wanted him dead; the hammer blow could come at any moment. The man might not be mortal, perhaps he wasn’t even human. And if he wasn’t human then what of Annie? If she’d come from the seed of a monster then what was she? And what of their unborn child? Suddenly there were far too many questions without answers. Grief wanted to drive him to his knees, but he knew now, more than ever before in his life, that he had to be strong.

Read more…

I like stories. I like writing novels, novellas, short stories and songs, playing in my band, going to camp.
I like good, edgy, writing, something with meat and teeth. It doesn’t have to be horror, scifi or fantasy; those things are nice but not necessary. It just has to be good. It has to make me think and be in awe.
Read more…

New cover for The Lost Village. Neil Jackson is an extraordinary artist. Thanks Neil.

Click on book cover to purchase.

It was a great party and the band played well and sounded great.

Doing a private party with my band tonight. We call ourselves Comfortably Numb. We’re sort of a Pink Floyd cover band. We also do a bunch of our own tunes as well as a variety of other classic rock. Great fun. Looking forward to it!

Just found out that The Haunting of Sam Cabot is one of Horror Mall’s top ten bestselling books for February.

Just received word that The Haunting of Sam Cabot is one of Horror Mall’s Top Ten Bestselling E-Books for Feb. 2010.

http://theundeadrat.com/horror-ebooks-feb-2010/

Worked on my latest novel today. Finally let my wife read a portion of it and she came up with some constructive pointers, ideas I had been flirting with but hadn’t put into play. Her input made me rethink my decisions, I made the changes and everything fell into place. Gotta love that girl.

Hello, everybody. If you clicked on my website and found this nearly empty space it’s because my new website is in the process of being built. Have patience and I think that within a few days my webmaster and I will have things under control.